Mother Teresa: A Biography (13 page)

The matter was then settled. Mother Teresa and her order were going to Venezuela.

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In July 1965, the Missionaries of Charity opened their first home outside India in Cocorote, Venezuela. Mother Teresa, accompanied by five sisters, came to the small town. Working in Cocorote also presented the Missionaries of Charity with a very different situation. Not only were they dealing with a different language, but also with a different culture. While in Cocorote, the sisters, for the first time, began cooperating in religious education. Because priests were in such short supply, the sisters took on the duties of preparing children to receive their First Communion and Confirmation, which were important Catholic rituals for children between the ages of 8 and 12.

By 1970, the duties of the sisters had expanded even more. After opening a house in Caracas, they received permission for three of their nuns to administer Holy Communion, a duty previously reserved for priests. This relaxing of rules allowed the Missionaries of Charity to offer Holy Communion to the sick and the dying. In addition, the sisters were busy conducting funerals, washing and cleaning for the elderly, and feeding the hungry. In 1972, the Missionaries of Charity helped with roof repairs when strong winds damaged several homes, leaving many without adequate shelter. In return for their many labors, the nuns might be rewarded with something simple: an egg from someone’s hen, or a banana. The sisters accepted the gifts with gratitude.

AN APPEAL FROM ROME

In 1968, Mother Teresa received another invitation, this time to work among the poor in Rome. The invitation came as a bit of a surprise. Rome already had more than 22,000 nuns belonging to 1,200 separate religious orders. Why, Mother Teresa thought, would the Church need yet another group to work with the poor? But this invitation was different; it came from none other than Paul VI himself.

Three years earlier, in July 1965, Mother Teresa was among a group of 40 persons granted an audience with the pope. Although Mother Teresa was overwhelmed at meeting the pope, as were the six other Missionaries of Charity who accompanied her, it appears Paul VI was taken with her.

Asking for her prayers, he told Mother Teresa to write to him. Now, the pope was asking her directly for her help in working with Rome’s poor.

That August, Mother Teresa and a handful of her nuns arrived in Rome to begin work. The area in which they were to work, known as the
bor-gate,
is located on the outskirts of Rome. Here live the city’s poorest residents, many of whom could not even begin to pay the city’s high rents.

The area was home to thousands of immigrants from Sicily and Sardinia.

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Rome’s slums were also known for their distinctive architecture. Shelters known as
barraca,
a kind of barracks-like structure, sprawled for acres in the city’s slums. The homes were also distinguished by their bright orange terra-cotta roofs, which were secured by heavy stones. Many of these homes lacked electricity, water, and sewage, though some enterprising souls were able to tap into the city’s electrical power source to light their homes. Some families also planted small gardens near their homes, which, in addition to supplementing their diets, alleviated the barren and harsh landscape of poverty with a wondrous riot of color.

Initial attempts to find a house for the order were futile; there appeared to be nothing for them. Finally, Mother Teresa found a
barracche.
It was by far the poorest and shabbiest residence that the sisters had resided in, something that appealed to Mother Teresa a great deal. With the exception of the house being wired for electricity, the residence was from all appearances no different from the others. There was no plumbing; the nuns would have to make do with the nearby fountain from which residents drew their water. In time, the Missionaries of Charity instituted many of the same programs for the poor of Rome that they provided elsewhere.

A GROWING MISSION

Over the next several years, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity continued to open new homes around the world. In 1967, the order opened its first home in Sri Lanka. In September 1968, a month after traveling to Rome, Mother Teresa journeyed to Tabora, Tanzania, where the sisters opened their first mission in Africa. A year later, the Missionaries of Charity were in Australia, where they opened up a center for the Aborigines. From this point on and well into the next decade, a new mission center opened somewhere in the world approximately every six months.

The Missionaries of Charity were growing in other ways, too. By 1963, Mother Teresa realized that men were better suited for certain kinds of work, such as working with young boys, than her nuns were. After consulting with Father Van Exem, she petitioned the archbishop of Calcutta for his permission to create a new branch of the order: the Missionary Brothers of Charity. The archbishop did not have to think very long; almost immediately he agreed to the request.

But there were issues to settle before the new order could get underway.

Men were reluctant to join because the order was still unrecognized. To become recognized meant that the order needed to grow and have the proper leadership to provide guidance and direction. Even though the T H E G R OW T H O F A M I R A C L E

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brothers were aligned with the Missionaries of Charity, under Church law Mother Teresa could not head a male congregation. She tried to engage the services of two other priests, but for a number of reasons could not convince either man to leave his order to take charge of the new congregation. Finally, a young priest applied for the position; Mother Teresa, even though she did not know him personally, agreed to have him take on the responsibility of directing the new order.

In 1966, an Australian Jesuit, Father Ian Travers-Ball, became the head of the Missionary Brothers, changing his name to Brother Andrew.

Travers-Ball was a young and charismatic presence within the order. He was familiar with conditions in India having come to the country in 1954

as a new priest. He was interested in working with the poor, and specifically with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity.

Early on, Brother Andrew believed it was necessary for the Brothers of Charity to establish their own presence and identity. Although he admired Mother Teresa, Travers-Ball also wished to escape her domination.

To establish a base for the Brothers, Brother Andrew rented a small house in Kidderpore, which Mother Teresa purchased. Along with a dozen young homeless boys, Brother Andrew moved into the home. In time, the house settled into a routine that was far different from the goings-on at Motherhouse.

In general, the Brothers adopted a style of working with the poor that was far less regimented. They were less sheltered than the Sisters, which allowed them access to the poor community in ways that the Sisters did not enjoy. The more informal approach enabled the Brothers to be more adaptable to cultural and regional differences than the Sisters. And because their focus was on helping poor boys, their homes tended to be smaller and more close-knit.

One of the first places the Brothers began work was at the Howrah railway station where many young poor boys lived. Much as Mother Teresa did when she began working among the poor, the Brothers started out by establishing contact and helping the boys in small ways, such as passing out bars of soap or helping get medical treatment for those in need. Gradually, the Brothers organized an evening meal for the boys at the station.

Some boys were taken in and given refuge where they could receive voca-tional training. Along with boys residing at the Shishu Bhavan, several were then transferred to other houses in and around the city, such as Nabo Jeevan (New Life), or Dum-Dum where there was a radio-repair work-shop. Boys suffering from medical or mental handicaps were taken to Nur-pur, a farm located about 20 miles outside of Calcutta, where they learned to farm. The Brothers also became heavily involved with mobile leprosy 1 0 0

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clinics and, in time, would take over the day-to-day work at the leprosy colony in Titlagarh.

Like Mother Teresa’s own Missionaries of Charity, the Brothers grew rapidly. Within a decade of their creation, Brother Andrew opened up the first overseas house in war-torn Vietnam. From there, the order began opening houses all over the world, usually in places where the Missionaries of Charity did not have a presence. In 1975, the Brothers opened a house in a poor, crime-infested neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, where they began working with drug addicts and alcoholics who had been living on the street.

There was no shortage of rough neighborhoods in the world, and Brother Andrew sought out as many as he could find, establishing homes in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Guatemala, the Philippines, El Sal-vador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Brazil. Everywhere they went, the Brothers undertook the jobs they knew best. Their mission, more than that of the Missionaries of Charity, brought them into contact with the residents of many a city’s mean streets and society’s outcasts: the crimi-nals, the drug addicts, and the hopeless alcoholics. The Brothers also continued their work with orphaned and wayward boys. Wherever they went, they established soup kitchens and helped those in need to receive medical attention.

Still, the Brothers’ road to success was not without its bumps. Pre-dictably, Brother Andrew and Mother Teresa clashed over the order’s management. One issue was dress; Brother Andrew requested that the brothers wear no uniform and instead dress in jeans and T-shirts. While this made them more accessible, it also made them at times harder to distinguish, and on more than one occasion, a brother was picked up along with those he was helping to spend a night at the city jail. Mother Teresa wished for the Brothers to wear their clerical garb. She also did not agree with Brother Andrew’s willingness to delegate authority and wished for tighter, stricter management, much as she did with her own order. The final straw came when Mother Teresa established a contemplative branch of the Brothers without consulting Brother Andrew. Her actions caused a temporary rift between the two orders; in 1987, Brother Andrew left the order. His replacement, Brother Geoff, brought with him a management style and an attitude that was more complementary to Mother Teresa’s vision for the Missionaries of Charity Brothers.

COME AND SEES AND CO-WORKERS

Assisting the Missionaries of Charity and the Brothers were volunteers whom Brother Andrew called Come and Sees. This group consisted T H E G R OW T H O F A M I R A C L E

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mainly of young people interested in working with the Brothers for a few weeks or months. Some were interested in joining the order, but wanted to see if they were capable of handling the work. Mother Teresa had adopted a similar practice with her own missions for young women who might be interested in joining her order.

Also assisting Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity were hundreds of volunteers, called Co-Workers. The term was borrowed from Mahatma Ghandi, who referred to his helpers by the same name. Like Ghandi, Mother Teresa’s Co-Workers were men, women, and children from all over the world. They came from a variety of backgrounds and represented a number of different religions. All shared an interest in helping the poor.

Among the first Co-Workers helping Mother Teresa were the Gomes family, and the many doctors, nurses, and dentists who donated free medical services. By the 1950s, a more formal organization of Co-Workers had been established, largely through the efforts of British wives who were involved with various social services in Calcutta. When a number of these women returned to England, they began meeting, and by 1960, a Mother Teresa committee was formed that began working with the poor in English cities. By the 1990s, approximately 30,000 Co-Workers were volunteering in the United Kingdom.

Smaller groups of Co-Workers appeared in other countries as well. In the United States, there are approximately 10,000. In Europe, the numbers are much smaller, with only a few hundred active volunteers. Still, the rise of one group has often led to the formation of another. Although forbidden to engage in fund-raising or publicity, the group publishes
Co-Workers Newsletter,
which goes out to all members. There is no paid office or staff to put out the newsletter; all work is donated. Further, Mother Teresa stipulated that all collection centers for clothing or food are to be in someone’s residence; there is to be no rental of a unit or store-front.

In some areas, Co-Workers handled donations of money which were turned over to the Missionaries or were spent to buy bulk purchases of necessities such as food, clothing, and medical supplies. The size of some of these donations are staggering even by today’s standards: for instance, in 1990, 17,000,000 Belgian francs ($680,000 in 2004 dollars) were used to purchase powdered milk, while 200,000 Dutch guilders ($146,000 in 2004

dollars) bought protein biscuits. Both purchases were then sent to Missionaries of Charity houses in Africa, South and Central America, and Asia. An additional 3,000,000 Belgian francs ($120,000 in 2004 dollars) was spent to buy clothes bought at one-tenth of retail value and sent to various countries in Africa. Finally, 24 large containers of used clothing, 1 0 2

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blankets, and bandages that were collected door-to-door by British Co-Workers were sent to several countries in Asia.

But Mother Teresa emphasized to her volunteers not to wander away from more humbling tasks, whether it was writing a letter, washing clothes, or reading to the ill.

There is also a very special branch of the Co-Workers that was created during the 1960s: the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers. These are individuals who are old, infirm, or handicapped; they cannot help with the more strenuous activities of the other Co-Workers. This group offers prayers for Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity’s efforts. Quite often, these volunteers are linked with a member of the active Co-Workers in their area. Currently there are about 5,000 Sick and Suffering Co-Workers representing 57 countries.